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Kitchen Chemistry

Kitchen Chemistry
Reading Level
     edHelper's suggested reading level:   grades 7 to 8
     Flesch-Kincaid grade level:   7.11

Vocabulary
     challenging words:    inquiry, Unpopped, boiling, dioxide, carbon, vinegar, material, originally, original, testing, base, separate, investigate, chemical, produce, pressing

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Kitchen Chemistry
By Sharon Fabian 		  
1     Inquiry is a wonderful word in science. It means investigating and learning about things on your own. If you want to do some inquiry into the science topic of matter, a really good place to start is in the kitchen. Kitchen chemistry is a great way to demonstrate chemical changes and the three phases of matter.
 
2     There are lots and lots of things you could investigate in the kitchen, since cooking usually involves some chemical processes, but let's just look at these few: bread, red cabbage, hot fudge sundaes, popcorn, and oobleck.
 
3     Cooking food often causes a chemical change. When a chemical change happens, the food cannot be changed back into what it originally was. So, making a salad is not a chemical change, because you can take a salad back apart, but baking bread is a chemical change, because you can't separate bread into its original ingredients. Baking bread is a chemical change that uses water, baking soda, and other ingredients that produce acid. Baking these ingredients releases carbon dioxide gas, which is what makes the bread rise.

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